Something like that is expected later this evening. Thanks to everyone who sent b-day wishes. At times like this it's good to peruse the list of all the famous and accomplished people who never even lived to see 40. Consider all they achieved so early and then think, "suckers, I'm still alive!" Living is the best revenge. Best put by Woody Allen, like so many things. "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying."
Meanwhile, the even older than me Nigel Short on why he did so well at the Sigeman tournament (4.5/5 and a 2974 TPR). "The problem was that I had a few too many glasses of red wine at the opening ceremony and I promised Johan Sigeman that he could have his money back if I didn't fight."
Competition is indeed the art of self-motivation. There should be a motivational poster with open bottles of alcohol and below it saying, "Booze: Helping you make promises you have to keep when you're sober."
Happy birthday! Have a great time, and don't make any promises you'll regret when you're sober! It would be interesting to make a list of notable chessplayers who didn't make it to age 40. I think Reti died at 40, so he doesn't count. Pillsbury, Cecil de Vere, Breyer, Charousek, Vladimir Petrovs, Klaus Junge, Vsevolod Rauzer, James Leonard, Gordon Crown, W.H.K. Pollock, and Derrickson leap immediately to mind.
Happy Birthday Mig! 40 is a piece of cake, not so sure about the rest...
Love reading Nigel Short "shorts"; he's quite a card and always fun.
Happy Birthday, Mig!
There hasn't been too many world champs in the last 30 years. When Mig was born, Petrosian's WC reign was in its final throes.
Last 40 years, I meant :)
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/2897/booze.jpg
Happy birthday Mig!
Leonid Stein, Vera Menchik..
happy birthday, mig.
40 is not old and besides, you look younger than 40.
Asrian, Oll...hey, isn't this kinda morbid for birthday wishes? (Here's a more festive title for the same list: "People who were once much stronger *and* much younger than Mig")
That's a scrummy looking cake, save me a slice. Best wishes, these days, 40 is the new 30.
Best wishes! , i agree with the cat (i have no choice im 34).
"It is sobering to consider that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead for a year." -- Tom Lehrer
The 40s are great...the problem is that you can't stop there.
Happy birthday Mig!
I didn't know Asrian had died; apparently it was of natural causes, not suicide because of the humiliation of being "a boy named Karen." Adding to my list - Peter Winston (presumably), who co-won the U.S. Junior Championship with Larry Christiansen at 16, and disappeared shortly before his 20th birthday.
Happy birthday Mig. And thanks for providing this lively blog.
Greetings on your 40th birthday!---glad you had an XL-ent time. This means that briefly we are codecadegenarians, as I have my L of a time later this year. There!---that's the true millionth word for English, not the lame-o "Web 2.0" declared by http://www.languagemonitor.com/. It has most of both "decadent" and "degenerate" in it---what word could be better?
You can also add Nikolai Riumin and Sergey Belavenets if you don't mind Russians from 1930's.
Asrian was killed in a car crash, I think.
On a UK note, the late Ian Wells, who drowned while playing at a tournament in Brazil.
The growing use of mitochondrial DNA databases (and other DNA technology) has improved lineage definitions and it won't be long before these ancestral questions are laid to rest, in a scientific sense anyway.
Asrian died of an apparent heart attack (while driving) on my birthday last year. Two years ago (on July 1) GM Maxim Sorokin died in the hospital of his injuries after a car accident.
Thanks for the kind wishes and all the weird conversations! My mom is leaving but there's plenty of leftover birthday cheesecake from Veniero's. Sorry I can't share.
I live in Iran now(beside being American citizen) and I am posting from here right now.
After recent presidential free ,outspoken and transparent elections, beside my posts getting deleted and filtered in an American sight to undermine my primary right of so-called freedom of the speech, makes me really wonder, as a christian which God I should believe in!, and bitterly am starting to see the truth in the outragious claims made by our muslem fundamentalist state leaders that American democracy is a political lever and tool to oppress other nations and within itself is a ballon full of hot air ready to pop in any appropiate moment, that whole world will hear about it!!
Your posts were deleted because you failed to be original enough to come up with a name other than that of a famous chessplayer. Falsely posting as players or other posters is prohibited.
As for free speech and your lack of understanding of the meaning of the phrase, you are no more welcome to impersonate others or blather on off topic here than you would be welcome to come into my home and urinate on my carpet. (Persian, naturally.) Perhaps as an American citizen you might be familiar with private property.
Pick a name, stay vaguely on topic, don't flame anyone, and be welcome. Or exercise your freedom of choice and go away.
Firstly thank you for replying back, then again I am much obliged to you for elucidating the meaning of free speech to me in a very original American manner, and by the way I don't have to travel ten thousand miles to urinate on a your valuable Persian carpet, I have about six of them in my home and I use one of the smaller ones as my doormat.
Man, that is one satisfied cat. Mig, some info on the provenance of the picture pls! Is it your cat?
It was a found pic, not sure of its origin. Used it to make a friend's 40th b-day card last year and recycled it for my own!
My cat, one of the two, is much fatter than that, amazingly. And without all the fur to hide his belly.
One thing is for sure, this fuzzball is one lazy hell of a Persian cat!
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